


Abduct

by INMH



Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2018 [20]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Family, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Past Violence, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-02 18:29:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15802182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: Alice is still a child.





	Abduct

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place right before Plague, with Alice, Kara, and Luther still in Canada; I would have waited and posted it beforehand, but my internet's been weird and I just wanted to get Plague out while I had a reliable connection.

She shouldn’t have watched the movie.  
  
Julia and Mark had begged Adam _so hard_ to be allowed to watch the movie even though Rose and Blake wouldn’t like it, and so even though Alice didn’t know much about the movie or even care too much about watching it, it only felt right to after they’d worked so hard to break Adam down.  
  
“Do _not_ ,” He said to them, “tell my mom or your dad. Do _not,_ ” He said to Alice, “tell Kara or Luther.”  
  
Well, Kara and Luther rarely set down limits on what content she could or couldn’t watch- mostly because Alice usually read on her tablet, not watched any programs- so it probably wouldn’t be a problem, but still she would not say anything. She didn’t want Adam to get into trouble.  
  
“Alright, sit down.”  
  
Had you asked Alice beforehand, she would not have thought a movie about aliens to be scary, would not have considered it to be something that would disturb her. She had survived too much, from Todd Williams’s explosive moods to human soldiers trying to gun her down, to fear some computer-generated illusion, or an android designed to look like an extraterrestrial. The unreal, Alice would have considered, could never be as frightening as the perils reality had already forced her through.  
  
Or so she thought.  
  
As horror movies went, the plot was fairly straight-forward, predictable even: Aliens surreptitiously came to earth, some creeping around the towns and cities, some staying aboard their ship. The ones on earth began to kidnap humans, slithering into their homes at night and attacking them, dragging them from their beds kicking and screaming. Some ghastly Thing was done to them on the ‘mothership’, something that occurred off-camera and was never directly identified by the characters.  
  
“ _Please! Please! What are you going to do to me?!_ ” Some woman wept as she was dragged into the ship, the automatic doors slamming shut in front of her right before the scene cut away. The actress was very good- you could really believe that she thought she was about to suffer some horrible fate.  
  
Alice felt something bad in her chest, something that felt a lot like fear, but said nothing to Julia or Mark. They were giggling, high off the knowledge they were watching something they weren’t supposed to be watching. Julia screeched at every scary scene, but there was a delight to it, a joy in being frightened that came to those who had never experienced the pure terror of a genuinely dangerous situation. During tense scenes, Mark would grab her or startle her deliberately and make her scream, prompting Adam to shush them. He certainly wasn’t frightened of the film; he was texting constantly, barely watching it.  
  
It was just a silly movie.  
  
There was no need to be frightened.  
  
Just a movie.  
  
They didn’t see the end of it, because Rose, Blake, Kara and Luther came back and Adam had to change the channel quickly before they could see it.  
  
“They give you any trouble?” Rose asked, obviously expecting the answer to be yes (to be fair, it _was_ kind of fun to rile Adam up. Easy, too.)  
  
“Naw, they were fine,” Adam said, making a show of being calm and unbothered even though he’d just narrowly managed to change the channel before they’d come into the room.  
  
Kara came over, smiling. “Time to go home, Alice.”  
  
Julia and Mark begged for Alice to stay, and normally Alice would have joined in the begging because Rose’s niece and nephew were the only friends she’d ever really had and she loved being with them. But tonight Alice accepted Kara’s command and wordlessly got her jacket on, bidding the Chapman family a faint farewell.  
  
The walk back to their little house took about twenty minutes. Alice walked between Kara and Luther as she usually did, both of them holding one of her hands. “You seem quiet,” Kara said about halfway home, “Is everything alright?”  
  
Alice nodded. “I’m fine.”  
  
She had to go to bed when they got home. Alice didn’t _need_ to sleep, not like human children like Julia and Mark, but Kara insisted that they maintain a consistent sleep schedule; they had plenty of time to do as they pleased during the day, and if- God forbid- the human authorities or any humans they didn’t know came in the night, they would question why a child as young as Alice was still awake.  
  
And they couldn’t afford questions.  
  
Kara tucked her in, kissed her goodnight. Luther did too, and then they both left the room, shutting off the light behind them. They sometimes went to bed at the same time, but more often than not they delayed for an hour or two, doing or talking about whatever adults talked about when children weren’t around to hear them. Alice wasn’t stupid: She knew there were things Kara and Luther spoke about when she wasn’t listening. And unlike human adults, they were _very_ good at making sure she wasn’t listening before they spoke.  
  
For a time Alice laid in the dark, delaying her sleep-cycle. If you’d asked her if something was bothering her, she would have said no, just as she’d said to Kara during the walk home- and she’d be telling the truth. It wasn’t that something was consciously, specifically bothering her- nothing that she could pinpoint, anyway. But nonetheless, a potent anxiety had settled on her like the wool blanket she currently had pulled up to her chin.  
  
Eventually, with nothing to think about, Alice slept.  
  
In her dreams, she found herself in the depths of Jericho, the ship that the deviant androids of Detroit had hidden in. Gunshots echoed off the walls, deafening and heart-stopping. Androids ran all throughout the narrow halls, screaming and panicking, and they bumped into her as they rushed for safety; Alice looked around frantically, but neither Kara were Luther were anywhere to be found.  
  
“Kara!” She bleated, cries overwhelmed by the sounds of gunshots and fear all around her. “Kara!”  
  
The hall ended in shadow, and scraping, clawing hands reached out and grabbed androids, dragging them into the darkness.  
  
“ _I didn’t do anything!_ ”  
  
“ _Please, just let me go!_ ”  
  
She remembered flashlights and androids on their knees before armed soldiers, remembered seeing their heads snap back with the force of the bullets. She remembered seeing androids in the streets as they were marched into trucks by the soldiers. The soldiers she saw now were warped, monstrous, like the aliens in the movie, but their behavior was more or less the same: Abducting victims and killing the ones that couldn’t be taken.  
  
They were coming for her.  
  
It didn’t matter that she was little.  
  
It didn’t matter that she looked like a normal little girl.  
  
They would take her, and she would never be seen again.  
  
Alice ran as fast as she could, bumping into and tripping over bodies in the dark hallway. “Kara! Luther!” She cried as she dodged panicked androids. “ _Kara! Luther!_ ”  
Something grabbed her from behind, yanked her backwards, and she screamed.  
  
“Alice!”  
  
Luther’s face loomed over her in the dark. Jericho had disappeared, and Alice came back to reality: They were in Canada, and the monsters didn’t know they were here.  
  
Yet.  
  
“You were having a nightmare,” Luther said as she sat up.  
  
Alice nodded, feeling a little weepy but not wanting to cry.  
  
Luther held out his arms, and she crawled into the embrace welcomingly. He lifted her up and brought her over to his and Kara’s beds; evidently Alice had been asleep for longer than she’d realized, because Kara was already asleep in bed.  
  
Kara and Luther’s beds had been inching closer to one another since the New Year, and now they were nearly touching; more than once Alice had awoken in the night, or before them in the morning, and saw Luther’s arm reaching across the increasingly narrow gap to rest on Kara’s arm or waist. Though Alice was a child, she was not ignorant to the implications of these small developments, and she approved- Kara and Luther were behaving as mothers and fathers do, and that _was_ more or less what they were to her now, even if she still called them by their first names.  
  
Luther settled her between them and drew the blanket up over her. “It’s alright,” He said, putting an arm around her. “We’re all safe.” He had an uncanny way of knowing what was bothering her.  
  
Alice’s head rested against Kara’s chest, and she pulled Luther’s arm a little tighter around her. Never did she feel more at ease than when she was between them like this, surrounded by those who loved her.  
_  
We’re all safe._  
_  
We’re all safe._  
_  
We’re all safe._  
  
_For now, anyways._  
   
-End


End file.
